WHERE IS GOD IN MY SITUATION?

 While we will always live in a broken world this side of heaven, our pain has much to teach us about God and ourselves. How we respond to it will reflect to others the faith in God that we claim to have in Him.

God wants us to learn and trust that He will grow us through our grief and disappointments, and we can thrive spiritually despite our adversity if we will respond to them in the right way.

Life and this world is not so much unfair. It is fallen. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. Not all dreams come true. We lose people. We fail people and people will fail us. And when we encounter the inevitable struggles of life, such as isolation, fear, rejection, failure, hurt, disappointments, insecurity, temptation, and more, we can have peace even when life doesn't make sense.

The only purpose that satan had in bringing about Jobs’ conflicts, was in hopes that Job would curse and dishonor God because of his pain and suffering. And while Job struggled with trying to understand it all, he never cursed God according to Job 1:22. God himself tells us to come and reason with Him. He understands that we have questions. But we are never to doubt His reasons by thinking that He is unfair for what He does or allows. Understanding our situation will only become clear to us when, we surrender any frustration, bitterness, anger or self-opinion. 

Today sweet friend, know this about God. God is in your situation. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, God is with you, beside you, above you, and inside you. God’s presence and watchful care never leave you. If you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, God is right in front of you, inviting you, drawing you, offering you the love, mercy, and grace that He longs to give you.

Perhaps a better question than “Where is God?” is “Where are you, in relationship to God today?”

Hold Fast,

-Bren

Grief That Comes Through Our Disappointments

Grief is the experience of coping with some form of loss. Most of us think of grief as happening in the painful period following the death of a loved one. But grief can accompany any event that disrupts or challenges our sense of normalcy in our daily lives. Grief can be brought on by many reasons; the loss of a loved one in death or some form of dementia, broken relationships, the regret of wrong choices, disappointments in life and people, bad health, home life, financial burdens and many other forms.

Grief comes to our souls through our disappointments, hurt, loss and pain and has a way of isolating us. Oftentimes when we suffer, we do so alone. I believe for the most part, that is why suffering is so dark and painful. Our grieving can be described as emotions that “come in waves.” It can feel as if our emotions wash over us without warning. One minute, life may feel as if it were back to normal, and the next, we find ourselves in tears. 

When we suffer in a state of grief alone, we become the sole inhabitant of the earth, or at least it feels that way. I am no stranger to this exile of mourning. I have felt it many times, especially when the plans that I have hoped for went south and I found myself alone and unable to change them. That familiar and unwelcome intruder that makes us the loneliest person in the world.

I recall reading a comment once from someone that I had much respect for that had been experiencing deep grief and said, "I escaped to the church sanctuary to pray. It looked dark and empty, the blackness relieved only by the dim, red glow of the exit sign. I felt my way to a pew and sat down. Resting my head on the back of the pew in front of me, I let the tears flow and prayed without words."

My friend said that after a few moments they sat up and opened their eyes and as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they discovered that they were not alone in the sanctuary. In the room were three or four others praying in the darkness as well. The darkness had deceived my friend, for the truth was, that they were not alone after all. My friend discovered that day that the presence of God, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit that dwells within every believer, had of course been there all the time. But they had let the darkness of their painful emotions convince them that they were alone.

They had chosen to surrender to those dark feelings of hopelessness, holding on to their loss and grief instead of the promises that God gives His children. Matthew 11:29, says, "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." This verse emphasizes the invitation for us to learn how to lift our burdens to Jesus and find peace; If we will come to Jesus taking His yoke, by surrendering the bleak desperate feelings of disappointment, and the deception that the enemy of our soul wants to fill us with if we listen to him. Jesus will take those feelings and replace them with a peace that only Jesus can give.

I am reminded today of the words of Jesus in John 14:16-18, "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, so that He may be with you forever; the Helper is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him; but you know Him because He remains with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."

Yes, another Helper, God's Spirit Himself; that is the promise. Another Helper to do for us all that Jesus could and would do if He were physically present. 

The peace of God is a tranquil state of mind and being. It comes through a believer's faith that arises when they submit to and trust in God's word and promises and is anchored in God's character, fulfilled through Christ, and applied in a believer's life by the Holy Spirit. This peace is characterized by a calm presence amidst chaos, transcending circumstances and providing assurance. Ultimately, it is what every believer longs for and is provided through a personal relationship with God himself through the work that His Son did on the cross; for all who will come and receive it. Will you come today sweet friend and receive the promise of God for your life?

Hold Fast,                                                                                                                                      -Bren

Winning the battles that you face

 If you’re walking through a time of battle, feeling like you have been abandoned, soaking in fear and anxiety right now my friend, you may scan the whole Bible searching to find relevant words to encourage yourself as I often do, and if you are familiar with many of the verses and teachings of Jesus, you will find that they will somehow seem to rise to the forefront at just the right time and be exactly what you need to hear at just the right moments.

It’s good to find a word from God when we need it. But God usually prepares us with his Word before we even know we need it. Jesus told his disciples ahead of time that he was going to be crucified. He told them ahead of time that they would experience persecution. He told them in John 16:4 that when their hour comes that they may remember the things he had told them.

What a blessing to have had our conscience shaped by the stories and experiences of men and women of the Bible. Like Peter’s sin and restoration, we can find hope for ourselves through an act of our own sin, that Jesus will forgive and receive us back as well.

What a blessing to know how to embrace and personalize the story of Elijah, experienced years before we would experience our own fears and lack of faith with feeling alone to wonder with our doubts and feelings that we too have been abandoned.

satan knows how powerful the Word of God is. God's word is the only weapon that can defeat him, and he is very aware of that truth. That is why he is forever trying to change, misuse or have us question what God has said. He even used that tactic against the Son of God Himself, in the wilderness in Luke 4:9 when he said to Jesus, “If You are the Son of God, he said, “throw Yourself down from here. For it is written: ‘He will command His angels concerning You to guard You carefully;".

When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, His response was not something He quickly came up with, but with the verbal Word of God that was in Him. When Jesus responded to the temptation to turn stones into bread by saying, “Man shall not live by bread alone,” He was doing more than finding an applicable truth to counter an error. He recognized that He was standing where Israel had stood before Him, in the wilderness, tempted to question God’s fidelity to His people. It was not doubt that tempted Jesus, but satan.

He did the same thing when he caused Eve to question what God has said in Gen. 3:4 "You will not surely die", the serpent said to the woman" by responding to her statement in Gen. 3:3 "but God did say, "You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die."

I believe that satan uses his "questioning God's word" tactic, against us more than any other. If you look closer in the scriptures where satan was speaking, he is in some way questioning what God says or will do or questioning us before the Father as he did Job and even Jesus.

While it is not the easiest effort that you will ever make, for satan will come against you in every way that he can to keep you from reading, studying and trusting the word of God, it is the only weapon that God has forged for you to use, in striking back against the enemy. That was the weapon that Jesus used when he engaged satan in the wilderness. Even the archangel Michael, in his dispute with satan over the body of Moses, rebuked him in the name of the Lord.

Jude 9 is the supreme illustration of how Christians are to deal with satan and demons. The example of Michael refusing to pronounce a curse upon satan should be a lesson to Christians in how to relate to all unseen demonic forces. Believers are not to address them, but rather to seek the Lord’s intervening power against them.

If as powerful a being as Michael is, deferred to the Lord in dealing with Satan, who are we to attempt to reproach, cast out, or command demons in our own strength and power? Ephesians 6:10-18 describes the entire armor that God has provided His children to use as they battle spiritual warfare. But to know how to use this armor you must know what it is, and to recognize when and how to use it. Otherwise, you will never win the spiritual battles that you face.

Hold Fast,

-Bren

Lukewarm State of Mind

Sometimes God’s children fall into spiritual ruts. They seem to be going through the motions of being a child of God but, without passion or a genuine feeling of the closeness that they have had in the past in their walk with Him. I admit that I have found myself in that situation as well.

It is in those times that we lose our excitement about the things of God and even damage our relationship with Him. While we do not reject Him altogether, we find ourselves in a very uncomfortable and awkward situation, for a while anyway. It is that in-between, not wholly with the world, but not totally in love with God either, place. 

This place the scripture refers to as, spiritual complacency, being lukewarm and straddling the spiritual fence. While this may not be your problem right now, at some point in your Christian life, you may be, if you are not careful to guard yourself, by being filled daily and walking in the Holy Spirit. 

All of us have the tendency to slip into a lukewarm spiritual state. Instead of being the thermostat, we become a thermometer. When everything is going well and we don’t need anything, it’s very tempting to let our guards down assuming that it will always be grand. 

In Revelations 3:14-22, Jesus sent word through John in a letter to the church in Laodicea. He told them that they were spiritually complacent: “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm neither hot nor cold I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” 

Jesus is telling us to not be content in that condition. Get up, move out! He stands ready and waiting to help us out of that wretched state, but we must desire Him more than anything else. You see it’s always “things’ that trip us up and get us sidetracked. Watch your step, watch your spiritual walk, don’t get trapped in a lukewarm state of mind and heart. Be ready to pick up and move on to a higher spiritual ground and remember that you can only get there by moving forward.

Hold Fast,

-Bren

The folly of trusting Egypt

Seeking shelter in the shadow of Egypt will only lead to disappointment and bondage. Isaiah 31:1 warns, "Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or seek help from the LORD."

Hezekiah was a godly man, the opposite of his father, Ahaz. "He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah." II Kings18:4. "He trusted in the Lord the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him." II Kings 18:4 "He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him." II Kings 18:7

"In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. 

Hezekiah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, "I have done wrong; withdraw from me; whatever you impose on me I will bear. And the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah, three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold." II Kings18:14 However, the Assyrian agreement was worthless, because the Assyrian army was soon at the gates of Jerusalem again. Their spokesman, a gifted military commander, Rabshakeh addressed Hezekiah at the time of the siege and asked, "On whom do you now rely, that you have rebelled against me? Behold, you are relying now on Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it." II K.18:20–21

Egypt's reputation was well-known. The Assyrians knew that Egypt would rather duck than fight. So, Isaiah, the prophet of God, and Assyria, Israel's mortal enemy, speak the same word, "don't rely on Egypt". But Hezekiah evidently had not resisted the temptation and so Isaiah's word was to him as well as his people.

There are times in our lives when doing nothing is the right thing to do and in doing nothing, we are actually trusting God. Desperate situations provoke desperate reactions. How do we know whether to flee, or fight, or sit tight? Providentially, the answer comes to us in this passage, "Your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher [in the flesh. And your ears shall hear a word behind you (the Holy Spirit), saying, 'This is the way, walk in it,' when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left." Isa.30:20–21

Many of us have had the experience of God's direct guidance in unusual circumstances. The goal, however, is to be under His guidance at all times. The tribe of Judah sinned and invited trouble by trusting in military might and not the Lord.

In the book of Isaiah, the prophet confronts Judah with 2 sins, the sin of trusting in Egypt and their military might and the sin of not looking to their God, the holy one of Israel. The people of Judah felt they had a reason to trust in chariots because there were many of them, and they felt that they had a reason to trust in their horsemen, because they were very strong.

However, they could not seem to find a reason to trust in the Lord. The one who in past time delivered them and gave them victory.  Judah was not trusting God at that time for the same reason that we do not trust God in our times of trouble. They were looking around with their fleshly eyes and not their spiritual eyes and their fear overcame their faith.

It's like having a wayward child that you see is living in the "far away country" making the most grievous of mistakes over and over again. You struggle to give them to God, but in the process of doing so, you take your spiritual eyes off of God's ability and allow your fleshy eyes to focus on your child's "lack of ability" in making better choices, and those thoughts if not repented of will carry you off to a baron place of doubt and disturbance.

What about you sweet friend? When you are faced with a situation that requires your faith in difficult situations, have you set your spiritual default to turn to God and remain true to Him in doing so? Or, do you find it easier to give up and look to other places for help, only to find in the end that only God could really help!

"God can make the stoutest heart to tremble. God can, when he pleases, make the stoutest heart to tremble; and as for those who will not fear God, he can make them fear at the shaking of a leaf." 2 Kings 7:3-11

 His strong hand can humble the hardest of hearts. Man brings destruction on himself. It is God that comes to his rescue when he humbles himself before God. 

Hold fast,

-Bren

To visit a dessert place

The Book of Numbers is known in Hebrew by the key word of its first sentence, Bamidbar, "In the wilderness." It is also always read on the Shabbat before Shavuot, the festival of the giving of the Torah. It was in the wilderness that the Israelites had been given revelation, by the spoken word of God given to Moses.

Every ancient religion but one, believes their gods are present in the phenomena of nature, like the sun, the stars, the sky, the sea, which are all visible to the eye; their gods can be seen. The Bible tells us that God is beyond nature. He is not in the form of nature itself.

Even Sigmund Freud, who was known to be somewhat hostile to religion, could not avoid being impressed by the idea of God and Who He was. While almost every other civilization has been a culture of the religious eye, Judaism is a culture of the ear, of words, speech, listening, interpreting, understanding, heeding.

The eye is captivated by the shifting scenes of nature, art and architecture. This is why it is prohibited in Judaism against making images or icons of God. To Judaism, the idea that God is visible is idolatry. God is beyond the totality of things seen in His creation. People may see His handiwork and believe in Him, but nature is clearly God's work and not who He is.

The vast universe is no more than the work of God's fingers according to Psalm 8:3 "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place". Psalm 19:1-5: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." Romans 1:20 "For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse." Everything that we can see is not actually God, but merely the work of God.

For Judaism, the idea that God is visible is idolatry, because God is beyond the totality of things that can be seen, and this is why it is important to know His Word and what He speaks and says through it. God Himself is a Spirit. John 4:24 instructs us regarding the way God desires that we worship Him: "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth."

While the eye plays an important role in viewing God's created beauty, it is far better to know God personally and hear what he has to say, than merely be impressed by His power to create beauty.

Ultimately, it is in the emptiness of the wilderness that the eye is subordinate to the ear. God has a special way of leading His children to a dessert place in order that they may listen to Him.

If nothing had happened but a lucky escape from the heavy hand of the Egyptian power and bondage the Jews were under, there only would have been a few more nomadic tribes roaming the border of the promised land and living and working alongside others in agriculture. But the desert was only a station on the way, not the goal. For in the desert, the tribes found their God. They entered into a covenant with him and thereby became his people.

When we undertake an exodus and wander into the world of searching and seeking, in order to find answers from God, we too discover a world that will resemble a desert. We will find that our flight leads us nowhere, until we stop, listen and learn the things that God wants us to know; and when our world has become a desert of sorts, we are at last in the solitude in which he can hear loudly, the voice of His spirit with its urgent whispering. Are you willing today, sweet friend, to visit a dessert place in order to hear from God? Or maybe you are on your way there now! If so, move on. He is waiting!

Hold Fast,

-Bren

Cleaning up our messes

 Being hasty in our actions and conversations with others, failure to restrain from assumptions and words that we want to say, anger that flares up when we get our feelings hurt and not being on our guard spiritually can do more damage in relationships than any other thing. When our moments become moments that are all about us moments and we fail to see the real issues, we are missing out on opportunities to be Christ to others. 

But, when we model the Lord’s behaviors, we become more loving, more willing to sacrifice our rights, seeing a little more of how God may be looking at the situation and we can be a great blessing to others, instead of what they may perceive us as being in a negative way. Letting go of those moments of control, judgement, haste, and pride will bring us closer to God and help us to win others. 

I know that the Lord is committed to me, so I need to commit to Him. I want to have a teachable spirit and be willing to accept His correction, or discipline. Yes, God disciplines me! He disciplines you too if you belong to Him. His discipline may hurt, but it is not harsh, nor does it scar or tear down. His discipline corrects, reveals and builds us up and moves us into the direction of better actions if we choose to summit to it. 

Learning how we speak to one another is not a onetime process. It is continual.  We all possess the opportunities of producing a harvest with our words. But in order to produce a transforming harvest with our words we need to be ever cautious to bless, lift up, show love and build positive and loving relationships, not tear down.

That thing that causes friction, conflicts, even fights and quarrels between yourself and someone you may care about is found in James 4:1-3, it says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it…. .” 

God’s Word teaches us that conflicts can come from the wrong desires that battle within our hearts as well as others and are the result of our sinful natures. Sin in us is always lurking to threaten our happiness and our fellowship with one another. The enemy uses everything and every opportunity he can to cause our focus to be misplaced, because he knows when that happens, even the smallest of things can escalate. 

Once we give in to our sinful nature, God is ignored, and we take matters into our own hands. It is with great effort that we train our minds to be set on God for those moments and what He has instructed us in truth to do in those situations, otherwise truth becomes concealed as if we did not know it or worse, it becomes twisted.

Sometimes, what we think are good desires, can be escalated to reach a sinful retaliation, if our thoughts and ways are not His and we do not deal with our emotions and feelings by making the choice to put them to death in us.  When something is dead, it has no voice, no feeling, no emotion, and no response. 

When my daughters were little, I found myself constantly picking up and cleaning up messes that they made. There were times that I thought they would never learn to stop making messes. As they got older, and I continued training and working with them to be more aware and thoughtful about making messes, the less they made.

This is how God deals with His own children. As His children grow in His grace and knowledge from the point of their new birth, they struggle trying to do the right thing. Like small children, they make messes in their lives. Those messes can often even affect others as well. Yet, as they grow in truth, desiring to do better, they begin to make less messes and they learn how to clean up the messes that they make by responding in the right way. School yourself in God's truth and watch your messes get fewer and far between.

Hold Fast,

-Bren